Aboriginal Australia like the poorest of Africa
Poverty is not simply about money. Having welfare payments is patching up one small part of poverty in Indigenous Australia. Education, health, employment, power -these are the more important aspects of poverty. And Australia’s far from strengthening these.
National Indigenous Times editor Chris Graham writes:
The Secretary General of Amnesty International has likened conditions in Central Australia to the poorest parts of Africa and Asia, and described the gap between rich and poor in this country as the most stark she’s even seen.
Irene Khan — the head of the world’s largest human rights organisation – made her comments during a tour of remote Aboriginal outstations in Central Australia yesterday.
The 2006 Sydney Peace Prize winner is in Australia this week as part of a campaign by Amnesty International to urge the Rudd government to reinstate the Racial Discrimination Act to the Northern Territory emergency
intervention legislation.
Her trip includes a meeting with the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin in Canberra tomorrow (Tuesday), and an address to the National Press Club later in the week.
Yesterday, Ms Khan flew to the Utopia region of Central Australia — a string of small Aboriginal homeland communities north east of Alice Springs — with a delegation of Amnesty workers, including National Director
of Amnesty Australia, Claire Mallinson.
Speaking from Camel Camp, a tiny outstation of about 100 people, 220 kilometres north east of Alice Springs, Ms Khan described the poverty before her as a “tragedy” and a “puzzle”:
The conditions in which people are living here are similar to the conditions you would see in poor countries in Africa or Asia,” Ms Khan said. “But they don’t need to be like this here. That’s the tragedy. That’s the puzzle.
I’m not unfamiliar with poverty. I come from a poor country — Bangladesh. We were in Brisbane earlier this morning… and between Brisbane and this within a few hours you go from the first to the third world.
[I've never seen that] in such stark terms.
It is very shocking to see this kind of abject poverty in the heart of a country that is very high on the chart of human developmental indicators.
There are around half a dozen homes in Camel Camp. Some of them have hot water, courtesy of wood-fired hot water heaters built decades ago. The rest do without.
But there are more humpies than houses. Around 100 people live in the community — it’s hopelessly overcrowded, so residents spill out into humpy shelters cobbled together from tree branches and left over building materials.
Ms Khan sat with an Aboriginal elder in her 90s — Topsy Ngale — who lives in one of the humpies. She heard the woman describe her living conditions and the reality of life in Central Australia.
Despite access to government welfare, it’s a life trapped in abject poverty. Clearly moved by what she saw, Ms Khan said it was wrong to measure poverty simply by income.
“You measure poverty by the discrimination people suffer, by the deprivation in which they live, by the insecurity that they suffer, and their voicelessness — not being heard, being excluded from decision-making, from participation,” she said.
“I think those are features of poverty. It’s not about justifying what is or isn’t there. It’s about the reality. And the reality of what we see here is people are living in very desperate conditions.”
Ms Khan said the solution lay in listening to the people living the nightmare.
“One needs to analyse and find out what’s happening. As far as these people are concerned, from what they have said, they feel they are not being heard.”
But they were heard, at least by the Amnesty International delegation. Before Camel Camp, Ms Khan and Ms Mallinson met with dozens of elders from the Utopia region at Arlparra, the small town that services the region.
Utopia’s most famous resident — Rosalie Kunoth Monks, the star of the 1950s film Jedda — told the gathering that Aboriginal culture was still strong with her people, that they would not surrender their land or their rights,
and they would die before they suffered forced assimilation.
“The Utopia region is a decentralised community of 16 homelands. We live on our homelands by choice, as our forefathers did for thousands of years,” Ms Kunoth Monks said:
We have our language. We have our culture, and the practices of that culture. And we have responsibility to our country. We have our family responsibilities and the ceremonies. We do not want to relocate to one large
community. That’s what the… government is trying to make us do. And because we won’t do it, we’re being punished.
They might as well line us up against this wall and shoot us, because we ain’t going nowhere. We are not about to lay down and die.
If the government is not willing to assist us, we need to tell our stories outside of Australia.
Harold Nelson, the traditional owner of the land around Arlparra also addressed the meeting. Mid-sentence he removed his Basics Card from his pocket — the card used to control Aboriginal people’s spending under the NT
emergency intervention — and held it in the air. “The government people, they’re playing up. They’re rubbish. They’re lying. It’s shocking.”
Ms Khan said the message from Aboriginal was clear.
“It’s a very tough life here. I heard [people] speak of their anger, their frustration, their despair, of being pulled apart from their homelands through policies they feel are unjust, unfairly applied.
“I will be spending the next few days listening to more people… [and then] moving to Canberra and meeting with the government.”
There, Ms Khan will meet with Jenny Macklin about the NTER measures, and the government’s response to the enduring poverty in Aboriginal Australia.
Ms Khan said she would keep an open mind on the intervention measures until her meeting with Macklin, however she did have a message for the government on the reinstatement of the Racial Discrimination Act.
“Amnesty International has been working on this issue for some time. I think our position is pretty clear,” she said. “Any measures need to be in line with international standards set by the Convention on the Elimination of
Racial Discrimination and on the Australian legislation on racial discrimination. That’s been our position, that remains our position.”
Ms Khan also had a message for the Australian people more generally.
“I believe the Australian people have an innate sense of fairness — what is fair and what is unfair. I would tell the Australian people to call on those values of fairness to [consider] whether it is fair that in a country as
wealthy as Australia, as well developed as Australia, there should be such disparity and equality.”
Petition for Homelands
The NT Government has announced it will focus funding on 20 growth towns in the Territory. Around 600 homelands will share just $20 million over three years, ensuring the chronic underfunding will only get worse.
The Government is passively centralising Indigenous settlements, all the while ignoring mounting proof that people who live on their homelands are healthier than those who live in towns. Living on homelands allows healthier people through connections with ancestral lands and spirits, and through healthier eating and exercise as people gather and hunt traditional foods (CSIRO).
GetUp! Is holding a petition to send a message to the Ministers to SAVE the homelands. But hurry -time is running out.
www.getup.org.au/campaign/Homelands&id=747
This works!
A new excellent initiative by the Women for Wik group is the new website What’s working. Here, the group will collect and publish information about projects that have been proven to work in Indigenous communities. With the negative media coverage that Indigenous communities overwhelmingly have in mainstream media, this site can become a valuable source of information about what has worked. Here’s the launch letter by Eva Cox:
White-list is the new black
What’s working in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities all over
Australia? Lots of very good projects and programs, most of which are
locally run and controlled!
Why do most people think nothing works? Because a lot of the good stuff gets
overlooked, defunded or just ignored by most mainstream media. What have we
done? Set up a webpage www.whatsworking.com.au to collect evidence and
showcase good Indigenous projects that was launched yesterday in Sydney.
Next step suggested at the Launch was adding a White-list to show all the
recent and current good projects that were/are working before defunding or
being closed. Some are CDEP projects, others short term pilot programs that
didn’t get followed up.
Why should people know about good programs and bad funding decisions?
Because our levels of ignorance allows Governments to make too many bad
decisions that ignore evidence, such as the latest attempt to under-fund and
therefore undermine the Homelands policy in the NT.
We launched the webpage with an encouraging message from Marian Scrymgour,
and Larissa Behrendt’s speech explaining why so many /government decisions
failed to take note of evidence of what does work we celebrated with some 50
plus list members at the Mori Gallery. Darlene Johnson, who has made films
in the NT and Eileen Cummings added their voices to the importance of
understanding issues like the NT homelands.
What can you do? Look at the webpage and see what we have found so far. Tell
us about any other projects you know about, so we can continue to publicise
what works. Tell us if something has been de-funded or closed, despite being
needed and working well.
We are also doing this because we want voters to make more informed
decisions than the politicians they elected! Despite the Apology, progress
has been slow and sometimes policies have gone backwards, often because of
relentlessly negative reporting of crises and deficits.
Women for Wik will holds governments to their stated commitment to
evidence-based policies by offering access to evidence of the programs that
have worked, are working and could work with appropriate support. By
offering the wider community a clearer understanding of the good stuff that
is happening, we hope to build support for policies that respect and enhance
the capacities of our Indigenous communities to manage their own lives.
eva cox for the co-ordinating group 28.6.09
Where’s the economic modelling?
Dampier Peninsula outstation at Chile Creek. Photo: ardi.com.au
NT Opposition leader Adam Giles of the Country Liberal Party has pointed out one of the Government’s many flaws in their outstations policy. Macklin has announced that funding will be targeted to larger population centres, and which communities these are would be based on their prospects for economic development. As Adam Giles points out, no economic modelling has been made to determine which communities are chosen. The communities were therefore chosen based on population size, existing services and location. What kind of economic development does the government have in mind? Industry? Mining? Manufacturing? Education? None of this has been made clear, but one thing is clear: the government understands poorly what self-determination entails for economic development.
The “Healthy People, Healthy Country” report from 2007 shows how connections with country are one of the key elements in healthy Indigenous communities, along side employment and education. Larger communities deny the nurturing of bonds with country, connections that are much stronger and hold far more importance than simple walks in national parks do for non-Indigenous Australians. Denying that bond contributes to a loss of self and thereby health that needs to be considered in the government’s economic policies of centralisation, or ‘normalisation’ as the process has been termed this time ’round.
The government here shows another joint in the series of dishonest reasoning for their interventions into Indigenous communities. The ‘emergency’ intervention into Indigenous communities in 2007 was also based on half-baked rationales, for solving a crisis the Howard government had ignored for 10 years. These are thinly veiled means to continue two centuries of cultural erasure, to get rid of the symptoms of a dysfunction the Australian government has created.
What of the excellent employment ideas that are emerging out of remote communities? Rangers patroling Australia’s borders and maintaining biodiversity in Australia’s unique natural environment, running tourism operations, or very promisingly -becoming part of the global carbon trading scheme? The latter is potentially worth millions of dollars to Indigenous land holders, depending on whether the participants at the Copenhagen meeting this year will include land use emissions in the carbon equation. -Here surely is a place for the government to be lobbying to achieve economic sustainability in Indigenous communities?
Where is the economic modelling for identifying economically viable communities? I’d like to see it involving all potential economic opportunities.. and I wouldn’t like to see economic viability equated with proximity to non-Indigenous culture.
Macklin advancing to the past
photo: galdu.org
Jenny Macklin has responded to Tangentyere township’s refusal to lease their property for 40 years, by announcing that she will take over by force. Using crisis rhetoric is allowing the government to limit self-determination and force assimilation, undoing years of progress in the process. Understandably, the township is wary of the government’s intentions with the leasing, and does not want to give up hard-earnt land rights. Former Labour election candidate George Newhouse has announced the compulsory acquisition can be referred to the United Nations.
Is there really no other way to improve the service infrastructure in these towns than through leasing land? Why is this not done in other parts of Australia?
Social dysfunction is a result of over two centuries of conflict, mistreatment and forced relocation that has left many people without social and cultural points of reference. To think that it will take a couple of electoral periods to ‘fix’ that, is plainly naïve. Land rights has given people a sense of ownership and direction, creating the fertile ground for re-setting cultural roots and starting a healing process.
Conditions are not good in these communities, and they are testimonial to Australia’s failure to achieve good outcomes for the First People of the nation. If there is one lesson that can be learnt, however, it is that moving people into towns does itself not solve problems. Moving people off country and into town has been done before, and it has failed before. The Healthy Country, Healthy People report reminds us of the connection between Indigenous people and their ancestral lands. Having access to work, school, health and country together provide for healthy, functioning communities. This is proven by those Indigenous people who have achieved these.
Other solutions are possible: the carbon trading scheme, border control, biodiversity conservation, tourism are all avenues for revenue in remote areas. What is Jenny Macklin envisaging the Indigenous people do in larger townships in the Northern Territory?
Ready to abolish the Sami Parliament
photo: nrk.no
The Norwegian Progress Party (FrP) are better placed than ever to win the Parliamentary elections this year. They currently count around a third of Norwegian voters, and although they cannot yet maintain power alone, their plans to partner with Høyre (the Right-wing party) to gain majority are enough to frighten those to the left of, say, Thatcher.
FrP views Sami culture and way of life as part and parcel of threatening sub-cultures in Norway, and has included the abolishment of the Sami Parliament into their party program. Thorvald Aspenes, a local representative for FrP, recently likened the Sami President Egil Olli to Adolf Hitler, and calls for Samis to be moved out of Norway if they do not want to assimilate. Pål Hivand accurately points out that once ‘hitling’ is used in debates, the end station of serious debate has been reached. He explains that hitling is a tool used to discredit the opponent by likening their values to those of Hitler and the Holocaust.
To compare an oppressed minority group to the perpetrator of industrial mass murder shows the complete disqualification of rational argument. But such are the tools of this, and other, far right-wing parties such as FrP -look to Australia’s One Nation. They use accusations, fear and sentimental arguments in successful ways to influence susceptible voters.
The fight against anything that looks, feels or thinks different.. this sounds frighteningly like fascism.
FrP is a right-wing populist party with Christian and nationalistic ideals, and has been advancing steadily the past decade, mainly by advocating single causes such as tax cuts, lowering petrol prices, limiting State powers, limiting immigration, strengthening assimilation, and emphasising personal freedoms, while wanting to improve the public hospital system, school system and aged care facilities. How the party is going to fund their program is a mystery, nor do they seem to be learning the lessons of the global financial crisis, but that seems not to be the point.
Norwegians want change. Sweden elected their right-wing parliament in 2006. The Democrats had then held power for all but nine of the years since 1932. In Denmark, Anders Fogh Rasmussen and his right-wing coallition were re-elected in 2007. It appears the socialist foundations of Scandinavia are shaking, and getting into line with increasingly racist tendencies in the rest of Europe. Feeding fear of Islamification as a threat to Norwegian values is being used as fuel for the FrP campaign. But is this tendency also a sign that the old socialist state institutions are getting old and stiff and unable to provide solutions for those who feel marginalised? Or are they simply getting very good at fear-mongering?
Doubting Climate Change?
Have a look at the Australian Greenhouse Office Climate Change FAQs document!
Climate change impacts on Indigenous ways of life
When Aili Keskitalo, then President of the Sami Parliament spoke to the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in May 2007, she presented concern that “The degradation of the environment in Inuit and Saami traditional territories caused by e.g. pollution, non-sustainable natural resource extraction and climate change constitute a great threat to their traditional lifestyles and culture. Climate change impacts on the environment in Inuit and Saami territories, e.g. changing the fundaments for their traditional livelihoods in a paramount way”. Climate change is not only of concern in Arctic regions. In northern Australia, cyclones, floods, drought, and their effect on health and infrastructure pose a further threat as result of climate change. To find ways of handling climate change, partnership and dialogue must be created between Indigenous peoples and their governments. Keskitalo went on to commend the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples for their important guidance in developing such cooperation.
The sixth session of the Permanent Forum held 14 to 25 May 2007 announced that the 2008 special theme would be “Climate Change, Bio-cultural Diversity and Livelihoods: The Stewardship role of Indigenous Peoples and new Challenges” (MessageStick June 2007)
